This USED to be a great place to go. It welcomed everybody, and everybody was treated like they…read morewere worth something. It was safe to come here and most people were friends even though from vastly different backgrounds. The lessons were a lot of fun, very cool, and practical, too. Not now, though.
Now, if you're not already in possession of a perfect body, are an excellent athlete, and suffer from NO weaknesses, you are treated like a freak. Got weak joints, asthma, arthritis? - congratulations! You, or more specifically, your money, are officially welcome here. However, the teachers will intentionally give you exercises designed to aggravate your conditions and otherwise subject you to such a miserable, humiliating experience you come away from every lesson feeling awful both physically and mentally. In other words, officially you are welcome, but in reality the position is go away, loser. The head 'shifu' by the way, is a piece of work. He talks a lot about being professional and making the studio look professional and welcoming everybody, then he makes fun of the students to other students. Half the time he doesn't even bother to see if his targets are out of hearing. If he loses students, he tells everyone who's left that he's glad those ones are gone (as in, "I'm glad they're gone. They were ugly." "I'm glad they're gone. They smelled." "I'm glad they're gone. They were dumb." and other displays of maturity). The studio takes a cavalier view towards appointments, either forgetting about them altogether, or assigning one teacher to teach several lessons at the exact same time, particularly if whoever had the appointment first isn't anyone they think they need to care about. If the teachers decide to cancel class, no one is assigned to tell you. You just find out after you've turned up at a locked building, never mind that some people travel from as far away as Salt Lake to go here. And the Facebook page - apparently nobody in charge there has realized yet that there's such a thing as a privacy setting, so the average researcher won't see that in addition to flattering themselves, this professional accepting-of-everybody anti-bullying studio has a serious liking for videos making fun of overweight, physically deformed, and/or mentally challenged people. Classy!
Don't get too excited if you won one of their drawings for free lessons and a uniform. It's the same deal if you just go straight to the studio and sign up as a first timer. The only way you don't 'win' is if you're already a student. It's a business tactic, shady but not illegal, and not a contest. Meanwhile, you've just handed a lot of strangers your personal information.
Then there are the trust exercises in which adult teachers physically assault and deliberately injure student teachers who aren't much older than fifteen, if that. (The 'trust' part is that you are not allowed to move away EVEN when you know the teacher is going to hurt you, and then you are expected to smile through the black eye, crushed groin, bleeding cuts, etc while the teacher grins proudly. Not calling the police or telling your parents is an unspoken requirement and is referred to as 'having a good attitude'. On the other hand, the current guy in charge has friends on the police force, so it's not as if you'll get them to listen to you, anyways.)
Then there's something highly fishy about the pricing schemes. Ask any student there what they're paying for the same program and chances are many of them are paying vastly different prices for the same services. For example, there was a time when bi-weekly lessons for a month cost $150. A few months after the latest shifu took over, he started claiming that that had been a special sale price and the real price was really two or three times that and students needed to pony up the last few month's difference they 'owed' immediately. When I checked with other students about this, they'd all been given different reasons for different rates for the SAME things. I'm amazed the shifu hasn't yet been investigated for fraud.
The shifu is very good at seeming nice, sincere, and kind - to parents when they're around - and only if they're not someone he'd make fun of, and to anyone he's trying to reel in. He's also a Navy Seal - impressive! But instead of being awesome, he seems to have taken it as permission to be thuggish and unprofessional, and to encourage like-minded staff. The studio is NOT a safe place for children, or for anyone who wants a healthy self-esteem, or for anyone who never wants to be in a position in which if they try to make a complaint it'll be your word against USSD's.
Do I sound bitter to you? You bet I do. Give me an example of someone who has to endure even one aspect of this nightmare, let alone all of it - and overpaid these jokers to boot - and comes out of it happy. Run, don't walk, away from United Studios of Self Defense of Provo.
